Look to the past to look to the future
Based on Ezra 1
The Friday before last, while waiting for a train in
Paekakariki, I read a text message from an old friend that simply said,
“This day in history……….”
I did not understand it. We had both been keen rugby
followers back in the day, so my first thought was, maybe he was reminding
me, a Taranaki supporter, it was the anniversary of Taranaki winning the
Ranfurly Shield off Auckland in 1996. (To be honest, I had forgotten the
exact date, and it had actually been about a fortnight earlier.)
It was only when I sat down on the train and started
reading the news on my phone when I learned the Queen had died.
Whatever your view on royalty, or what – if any –
place the monarchy has in Aotearoa New Zealand in the 21st Century, might
be, it would be difficult to not have some admiration for the remarkable
person the late Queen had been, the selfless service she had given, and how
this was grounded in her strong personal faith.
Of course, we all knew this day was coming. She was 96,
she had noticeably slowed down, and her health had been failing rapidly in
recent days. But that didn’t lessen the impact of her demise.
All four of my grandparents had lived through the
reigns of six monarchs, so they had each experienced five successions. But
for those of us who are younger than seventy-something, the Queen was the
only monarch we had ever known. So having a Queen or King die and be
replaced is something we had never lived through. We knew there were
detailed succession plans, like Operation London Bridge and Operation
Unicorn. But the rites of succession had not taken place for 70 years, and
how they would pan out was something of a mystery.
I watched some of it on television last Saturday night.
I saw the new King and some gathered Privy Councillors authorising the
continued use of various great seals, presumably shortly after he was
formally proclaimed King, at St James’ Palace, and then I watched the
proclamation being read from the Royal Exchange.
It suddenly occurred to me that while there would be
people who would remember the previous succession, it was almost certain
that nobody who was actually participating in these rituals would have done
so the previous time. This would have been all new for them, like it was for
most of us. And I was reminded of the reading we heard this evening from the
Book of Ezra.
This reading describes the end of the time of captivity
of Judeans in Babylon. Quite coincidentally, the Babylonian captivity is
said to have lasted for 70 years; the same time the late Queen reigned for.
While the historicity of some events described in the
Hebrew scriptures can be questioned, there can be no doubt that the
Babylonian captivity happened. There are records outside the Hebrew
scriptures and tangible archaeological evidence.
I expect most of you will be familiar with the story of
how the United Kingdom of Israel had split into two kingdoms. The northern
Kingdom, which had retained the name Israel, was conquered by the Assyrians.
There would not be a country called Israel again for more than two and half
thousand years. Then the southern Kingdom, Judah, fell to the Babylonians,
who destroyed the temple and much of Jerusalem and carried most of the
people into captivity until they were liberated by King Cyrus of Persia and,
as was described in our reading, they were permitted to return to what was
the Yehud, a province of the First Persian Empire.
But in many ways, they returned a different people.
Israelite and Judean society had previously been organised by tribe; now it
revolved around individual whanau. Some classes of society, like the
scribes, had become more significant. And some aspects of Babylonian culture
had rubbed off on them. While the later stages of composing, editing,
and redacting the Torah or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew
scriptures, which would come to play a crucial role in Jewish life, took
place in the years immediately following the return from captivity,
there is strong evidence of Babylonian cultural influence on the text, such
as the Great Flood stories in the Book of Genesis, which have unmistakable
parallels with the Babylonian epic poem the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Judeans, who had been exiled from their spiritual
home, had now returned. What would they do next?
To look to their future, they had to look to their
past.
But to look to the past does not mean to go back there;
as author L.P. Hartley noted, “The past is a foreign country: they do things
differently.”
To look to the past is to learn from it. The returning
Judeans had to the look back to the former days of the Jerusalem and the
first temple as they sought to re-stablish themselves after 70-year absence,
just like the United Kingdom and Commonwealth had look back to rites of
succession that had not been carried out for 70 years.
And I believe that as followers of Jesus the Christ, we
too need to look to the past to rediscover exactly who we are called to be.
Jesus gave us two simple commandments: to love God, and
to love others. In the Older Testament, these two commandments are in
completely separate books. It took Jesus to bring them together and show
that it is through loving others that we can demonstrate we love God.
It disturbs me that many of today’s supposed
expressions of Christianity have grossly distorted its original message.
When I see churches that have replaced the love that is
central to being a follower of Jesus with a hatred of people who have
been created differently from them, I despair. When I see the scriptures
being misused to subjugate women, promote extreme nationalism, or try to
justify slavery, exploitation, or oppression, I get angry. And when I see
high profile church leaders twisting the message to con poor people into
giving them money, I want to bang my head against the wall.
And it really upsets me when people from outside the
Church see such behaviour get put off Christianity altogether. I have even
met parents who will not allow their children to participate in church
activities, because they fear they might be sexually abused. That is very
sad. But can we honestly blame them?
But while it is easy to be sad, angry, or both at how
some denominations of the Church appear to have replaced the core teachings
of the gospels with short-sighted toxic fundamentalism, I have a better
suggestion.
And that is to look to the past and reclaim what to
really means to be a follower of Jesus, just like the Judeans had to look to
their past when they re-established themselves after being freed from
captivity, and like the United Kingdom and Commonwealth to look to their
past to ensure a smooth succession. And then we will show that we are the
authentic faces of those who follow Jesus. Not the hateful money-grubbing
hypocrites who seem to be the face of religion in the media.
In this regard, I would like to leave you with one of
my favourite quotes, which is from Madeleine L'Engle: “We draw people to
Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how
wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so
lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”
Darryl Ward
9 September 2022